A Belmont Who Fought for Racing and for Soldiers

By Eliza McGraw

June 4, 2014

Horse racing fans are eagerly awaiting Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, the race that will decide whether California Chrome will join racing royalty like Seattle Slew, Secretariat and Omaha as a Triple Crown winner. But a little more than a hundred years ago, racing was threatened, and the Jockey Club president, August Belmont Jr., decided to save it.

In 1908, New York stewards and the police began enforcing the antigambling Hart-Agnew law, although people could — and did — still bet with oral agreements.

In 1910, New York’s Legislative Graft Committee alleged that at a secret dinner held at Delmonico’s restaurant, horsemen gathered to raise funds to defeat Hart-Agnew. Belmont found himself testifying that there was no such gathering. He also defended his fellow Jockey Club member Harry Payne Whitney, who was in Europe with his stable.

“Perhaps you may not think so, but the International Polo Match is a matter of great concern,” Belmont told the committee. “I don’t think that he could be expected to take a steamer and come out here to testify to you about some mythical dinner that took place.”

By 1911, however, Belmont’s protests went unheard. An amendment that would have protected owners and trainers from Hart-Agnew was shut down, effectively shutting down racing and spurring Belmont to further action. Now, he could no longer defend his fellow horsemen in absentia. He needed help.

“It is upon you polo players, huntsmen, and amateur riders, as well as racing men, that the future of the thoroughbred horse in this country depends,” he told guests at a dinner held at the Waldorf-Astoria.

His larger point was that thoroughbred racing was a support system for the nation, a way to produce cavalry mounts as well as athletes. Anyone who believed that racing only equaled gambling, Belmont said, “is an enemy to the interest of our farmers, our ranchmen, military establishment, and all citizens who use and breed the horse for pleasure.”

“What would happen if in case of war, notwithstanding a growing international desire for peace, the cavalry had to be quadrupled?” he asked the dinner guests. “Where would they come from?”

Another speaker added that American officers needed more refined horses: he knew of one befuddled officer stationed out West who thought his 13.2 hand “broncho” was the “true type.” This could not stand, he said. America could do better than undersize broncos for their fighting men. But despite Belmont’s call, New York’s antigambling laws remained. There were no Belmonts run in 1911 or 1912, and some horsemen fled to Europe. (For their part, the British were appalled by the Hart-Agnew law: “It hardly seems credible that in this twentieth century a civilized community can be found that will suffer itself to be trampled on in this fashion,” ran a 1910 editorial in The Sporting Life.)

Eventually, however, Belmont and his compatriots prevailed. On May 30, the track reopened, quieter, because bookies could no longer shout their odds, but happily buzzing with the “among friends” bets that were now allowed.

By the time the race returned in 1913, evidence of Belmont’s multilayered approach showed in the military steeplechase that opened Belmont day’s racing. More presciently, a war that would require hundreds of thousands of cavalry horses crept closer each week. The answer to the question Belmont put to his fellow horsemen — where will these horses come from? — was, as he had predicted, from them. He led the pack, offering the government six of his best stallions, including two well-known studs, Henry of Navarre and Octagon, and others followed suit. European soldiers rode Belmont-bred horses, and when Americans entered the war, many of them did, too.

Although Belmont’s point about the necessity of thoroughbreds was proved, even at 65 he remained committed to the military, and would soon be in France with the Quartermaster Corps, writes Dorothy Ours, in her "Man o’ War: A Legend Like Lightning.” When a leggy red colt was born on his farm, his wife named the horse “Man o’ War,” after him.

In turn, the Belmont-bred Man o’ War went on to win the 1920 Belmont Stakes, setting the record for the fastest mile any horse had run, and demonstrating the very dedication to “the future of the thoroughbred horse,” for which Belmont himself had called.

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misstated the year Man o’ War was born and where August Belmont Jr. was at the time. It was 1917 — not 1916 — and Belmont was in New York; he had not yet gone abroad. The article also referred incorrectly to the origins of the horse’s name. According to Dorothy Ours’s book about the horse, Belmont’s wife, Eleanor, named him Man o’ War as a tribute to her husband; it is not the case that she named him My Man o’ War and that Samuel Riddle dropped the “My” when he bought the colt. (According to the book, the “My” was a typographical error or a misunderstanding by The Thoroughbred Record in 1918.)